Help with Animated GIF images in Photoshop

So I'm making a sig, and I've got it all laid out the way I want it to look. The only thing I have left to do is take this animated GIF image I've got and put it onto the sig. It sounds easy enough, but I want it to still move while it's in the sig and after I upload it, and I want to make sure I do it the right way. I haven't got the slightest clue how to do it. I've tried Google for a tutorial, but it came up short. If anyone could help me out that would be fantastic. Thanks.

Alright, this may seem very complicated, but it's not at all.

Go to a website such as www.imageshack.us then upload the gif. Afterwards, copy the URL of the pic and paste it in your sig surrounded by the [img] [/img] tags. The gif should be animated no matter what.

Try making a bunch of layers with the signature in them, and put the frames of the animation in each layer. Then save for the web, animate it, and ciao bang.

I don't think it's working because the gif I'm using has transparency in it, which just loses me. This is the gif I'm trying to use:



I want that image to go on the left side of this:



-.- I don't know what to do. When I try your method and paste it into seperate layers, since it has transparency in it, the colours go all deformed and are bright green and purple. Is there any way I can just take the GIF image and paste it in in one step?

Well in the gimp there is a plugin called GAP that will do that for you. I can't find a photoshop version or how to run gimp plug ins in photoshop. I'll keep looking and I'll post something if I find something.

Actually I did download both GIMP and GAP. I was using this tutorial to do it, but the only problem I ran into was that since there is transparency in the image, there are some strange gaps say, in Sephiroth's face, which looks very bad. If someone could maybe save that image, have a look at the layers/frames, and maybe give me some advice, that'd be great.

Weirdest animation I have ever seen, some of the layers were just add-ons to the lower ones, I edited it so every one is a layer that you could take out and it would look fine. That will work for either method now, the gap or the layer one.

Hope I didn't reck the timing

I'll try to do it for you, if you want.

I'm a pretty good animator (click Welcome to din in sig)

Well first off it to get the mask layer that you want to put over the animated image, this is the thing I'm hoping you have (refers to red background in the Welcome to Din Sig)

After you got that the rest is just really long and repeatative

Open up ImageReady (Photoshop wont animate)
After this is done go Window>Animation
this will open up a new toolbox
Next go (>) button on the toolbox then select "Create New layer for each new frame"
this will ensure that the slides wont change.

NOTE: If you make any modifcations between slides, it will probably stuff the whole thing up so make sure you know whats going on.

Now the thing is set up, this is the bad and boring bit

Open up the Gif with Imageready, you should see all the individual frames appear you have to select a layer and copy it under the mask layer then copy merged and past it into a fresh "New Image" the same size as the other one.

Repeat with basically all the frames until its done.

Timing is under the image it should be pretty noticable and the tween is good for fad in and out.

After you finished press
Ctrl+Alt+P, it's the only way for you to save an animation i know of

NOTE: The Quality Decreases with the increase of timing and frames

And you should be done, If that didnt make much sense ill make a tut for you.

Okay there is an even simpler way to do this, my way! (*Just as a note, if you put the animation to the left of the sig, its 450 pixels, also I had to chop 10 pixels off the sig to make it the same height as the animation)

This literally took me 2 minutes, 30 seconds of which was downloading the animation.



Here's how I did it:
1. Take first frame (out of 15) and add the sig to the right side of it
2. If you have a crappy animator, readjust the size of every other frame to that of the first (450 x 100)
3. Fill the empty space on the others frames with the transparency color, in this case I belive it was red.

That's it, I use Easy GIF Animator, all I did was import the revised first frame and all the other frames automatically resized and put in transparencys! Hope that helped.
I don't belive there was any image reduction, I didn't touch the timing or anything.

EDIT: Also I use www.imageshack.net to upload.

All right guys, thanks a lot for the advice. I decided that I like this sig the way it is, but I'm still going to try to figure it out for my next sig. Thank you for editting the image too Bandit. Thank you so much everyone. =D

*Laughs at own studpidity* glad you got it figured out. I'm so stupid, I thought you were talking about posting an animated gif on the net. *punches self in face*